EVGA has introduced a new "Global Warranty Policy" that will apply to all EVGA products, no matter which region you live in and no matter if you are the original buyer.

The new EVGA global warranty policy will apply to all new EVGA products purchased on or after July 1st, 2011. The new warranty policy also adds a minimum 3-year warranty on all products, not including the recertified products. The warranty is now transferrable, which means that the actual warranty is tied to product and not the original buyer, which is definitely a nice deal.

EVGA will also introduce so-called warranty upgrades that will be available to original owners upon registration with 5 or 10 year warranty upgrade for a small price. The best part is that product warranty is now global, and will be served by local warranty center with free standard cross-shipping RMA.

It would be nice if all manufacturers to decided to go this way as currently EVGA definitely has the best warranty deal.

You can check out more details regaring the new EVGA warranty policy here.

Not only are HDDs following in the footsteps of economies worldwide, we now hear that WD and Seagate will cut their HDD warranties.

Seagate allegedly sent a letter to distributors, where it said that warranties will be cut on December 31, 2011. WD, on the other hand, is planning for a “policy change” on January 2, 2012.

Apparently, Seagate’s Nearline, Barracuda XT and Momentus line warranty coverages will drop from 5 to 3 years, whereas some desktop and notebook bare drivers will drop from 5 to 1 year. As for WD, its Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue drives’ warranties will go down from 3 to 2 years for drives shipped after the date.

We already wrote about the warranty issue back when the HD 6990 was launched and we told you that it is simply a matter of time before some partner steps out and says that the cards are oficially covered by a proper warranty despite AMD's dodgy warranty statement. The wait is finally over as XFX has boldly stepped out saying that the warranty stands under usual RMA terms even under 880MHz OC.

The XFX didn't really surprise us as some partners that we talked to have already said that, unoficially, the card is still covered under warranty and regular RMA terms. The reviewers that have pushed the HD 6990 to work on 2nd BIOS have already tested the card and it works pretty good, although some do suggest that the fan should be pushed to a bit higher RPM just to keep the temperatures a bit down.

It is nice to know that at least XFX had enough questions about it which made them put its foot down and say officially that the card is still under full warranty. Let's see which partners are joining in on the fun.

As you probably already know, AMD's latest addition to the HD 6900 series lineup, the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 card, features a dual BIOS switch. Unfortunately, there are a few confusing things as, for now at least, there is no official statement on the warranty regarding the BIOS switch.

The switch is covered with a rather large yellow sticker that points you to the user manual, which then takes you to AMD's website here that gives detailed information regarding the BIOS switch. The only warning, or the only thing that we managed to get from that link is that you have to make sure that your system meets all the minimum system requirements.

AMD labels the BIOS switch position one as 450W Extreme Perfromance BIOS and the position 2, which is the shipping position, as the 375W factory-supported Performance BIOS. The confusion starts when AMD talks about warranty. The warning, among other things, states that :"AMD does not provide support or service for issues or damages related to use of an AMD graphics card outside of specifications or in excess of factory settings. You may also not receive support or service from your system manufacturer."

As far as we are concerned, the BIOS position 2 is still a "factory setting" and not user programmed. On the other hand, AMD might want to distance itself from any other system damage that may happen if you switch it to Extreme BIOS, like for example blowing up your PSU.

We are still waiting for partners and AMD itself to give us the official stand regarding the BIOS switch and we honestly hope that AMD will play its cards right with this one. So stay tuned.